Technology Lab —

Adobe almost does something amazing by accident

Making Creative Suite 2 free seemed like a genius move. Unfortunately, it wasn't.

It seemed like an intriguing deal. An old version of Adobe Creative Suite—the 2005 vintage CS2, to be precise—became freely downloadable from Adobe, with nothing more than a free-to-create Adobe ID required from users. Although basically useless for Mac users, as CS2 is only available for PowerPC, for Windows users this is a powerful, if not quite cutting edge, suite of graphics apps.

This looked like a clever move from Adobe. Photoshop is widely held to be one of the most routinely pirated applications there is. In making an old but still servicable version of the software it appeared that Adobe was offering a good alternative to piracy: instead of using a knock-off copy of CS6, just use CS2.

A free CS2 would also go some way toward starving alternative applications of oxygen. Given the choice between a free copy of CS2 and downloading, say, the GIMP, one imagines that many users would plump for the commercial application. It's more of a known quantity, with a more polished user interface. And Photoshop is, frankly, the gold standard of bitmap image editing. Even an older version has a prestige that GIMP doesn't. This is not to say that CS2 is necessarily superior to the GIMP; it may or may not be. It doesn't really matter; Photoshop has a reputation and respect that the GIMP doesn't have, and even if some might argue that it was undeserved, it influences the decisions users make.

Giving away an old version in this way certainly appears unusual, and perhaps even a little brave for a commercial company such as Adobe. But Adobe is already being quite brave at the moment. The company is in many ways reinventing the way it both develops and licenses its products. It is creating a wide range of HTML5-oriented tools under the Edge brand that use a mix of open source and proprietary technology, and it is pushing hard its subscription software model with the Creative Cloud.

In this context, giving away an old version of its software doesn't seem quite so outlandish. It might sacrifice some revenue (though one suspects not all that much), but it strengthens Photoshop's dominance—and also makes Adobe look pretty good, to boot. And although an unusual move, it's not entirely unprecedented. Just last month, Microsoft made its previously commercial Expression suite freely downloadable after the company decided to cease further development. But this isn't quite the same; Creative Suite is still a going concern for Adobe. Expression isn't for Microsoft.

Unfortunately, it appears that Adobe wasn't really intending to give out CS2 for everyone. Shortly after news of the apparently free software spread across Twitter on Monday, the download page became unavailable, producing an error instead. Subsequent blog and forum posts indicate that this wasn't an inspired decision to liberate an obsolete but still useful application after all. It was something between a mistake, an error of judgement, and a misunderstanding.

CS2 used a product activation scheme to control licensing. When you install the software, it interrogates an Internet server to ensure that the license key you entered is acceptable. In December, Adobe retired the activation servers used by CS2. This posed a problem for CS2's licensed users, because without the activation servers, they can no longer reinstall the software.

To help these people out, Adobe offered versions of CS2 that didn't need activation. Mere entry of the serial numbers that Adobe put on the download page would suffice. The company says that although it looks like it was giving the software away for free, it in fact wasn't. It was just trying to assist its customers. Adobe says in order to legally use CS2, users still require a purchased license.

There are ways that Adobe could have helped out these users that didn't result in putting the software up on a server that anyone could get at. For example, the company could have released a patch that removed the activation checks from the applications and the license key entry from the installer. This could work with original media, and hence not require distribution of CS2. For whatever reason, the company decided not to go this route.

So it turns out that rather than doing something a little bit daring and unusual—something that might even inspire a new approach to licensing old, obsolete software—Adobe was doing something somewhat useful for existing, paid up, licensed users, in a rather peculiar way. This is a shame. The company could have earned a lot of goodwill by making CS2 free, and it would have been easy enough to offer a no-cost license for the software.

There is one final surprise. Originally, acquiring CS2 required an Adobe ID. It seemed a fair enough trade; Adobe knows your e-mail address and name, and in return you get some no-cost software. Since the whole issue blew up on Twitter, forcing the company to issue its clarification, perhaps one would have expected it to restrict access to the downloads, or use some other technique to remove the activation check.

It has not. Instead, Adobe has made CS2 even easier to get, by removing the Adobe ID requirement. The company created a new CS2 download page, and this time around, it had no registration requirement at all.

It's almost as if the company wanted people to download the software.

Update: Or perhaps not. The new download page has now been pulled. Alas. While it's still working for some people, for others, it's redirecting to a CS6 page.

161 Reader Comments

The only reasonable interpretation I can see for yanking the nominal registration requirement after the snafu and not putting a disclaimer on the page saying you need to have bought CS2 to use the download links is that Adobe's concluded after the fact that having a semi-official free version is a good thing but isn't willing to admin to having snafued it. The ambiguity means that most people downloading will be consumers who would never have paid anything approaching retail price anyway (~$300/1200 student/standard) not business customers allowing them to mostly protect their bottom line.

That's because you're running it under Rosetta. The second you move up to 10.7 (Lion) or higher, you'll lose the ability to run it.

Also, you're taking a performance hit for running under Rosetta.

i would think running it on a Power PC would be a bigger performance hit

It wouldn't. Rosetta would probably be slower than a G4, maybe even slower than a G3.

Honestly, no that's not actually the case. Some plugins that are not included are slower on the C2D than G5s, but for most cases, C2D w/ Rosetta is faster than a G5. Apple picked their time quite smartly to make Intel Macs appear faster even when running PPC software. Apple had already been through this in the 68k->PPC transition where unfortunately, many applications WERE slower on PPC initially.

The Mac version of Acrobat 8 Pro includes x86 binaries, runs fine on Mountain Lion. The font rendering kinda sucks with some PDFs, haven't figured out what's up with that but if you need to OCR, create forms, compress PDFs, or scan to PDF it's a useful free tool.

Adobe's actual motivations are a mystery to me. But it looks like they have accepted that this software is going to be downloaded without purchase and used whether they like it or not.

Possibly to maintain an option to be "Hard on Piracy" they didn't make a 'Free' version available but left a version out there for people to pick up with a wink, with all the advantages the author of the article stated (broadening user base and program familiarity). Those downloading the software without a legally purchased license are still using illegal copies. Adobe just chooses not to pursue legal action or make it hard to obtain, copy or use.

Perhaps they don't want to set some kind of precedent that would harm legal strategies they want to preserve for the future.

I find the complete lack of an explanation or disclaimer very odd. It does seem like Adobe is saying "We're not giving this away for free" while actively handing it out to everyone who passes by. Adobe seems like its usually DRM for it's products..

I think it's incredibly smart of Adobe. Despite their best efforts to lock it down, new versions of their software are pirated very quickly. And while Photoshop is the definitive photo editor, that cost of entry is extremely steep for a home user.

Giving away the full suite, even the outdated package, gives people the real thing, and allows them to develop their Photoshop skills, making them more likely to possibly plunk down the cash for a more modern version at some point in the future.

Adobe sees its future profits coming from Creative Cloud. You get access to the whole suite of their products and they release many updates and new functions exclusively in Creative Cloud – if you buy their individual products or Creative Suites the old-fashioned way, you will be forced to buy the new version to get these updates.

It really would be a bold move to make a flagship product available in full version without some pay wall between the user and commercialization.

I guess, if you are not a photographer shooting RAW on a recent-vintage camera.

That is one way Adobe has found to force photographers to upgrade their copies of Photoshop => as new cameras are introduced, new versions of Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) are introduced to support them.

And newer versions of ACR will only work with newer versions of Photoshop.

If you want to shoot RAW with a recent camera, you need the recent versions of PS and ACR - unless Adobe's DNG converter can convert your RAW file into a DNG (Digital Negative) that older versions of Photoshop can import.

I have a fully paid up legitmate retail version of CS5.5 (yes, freetards, I'm an idiot) and even I remove all that DRM. I bought the software for... well... the software, I have no need for the crapware DRM underneath nor the background 'upgrading' shenanigans.

In addition to Photoshop, the CS2 versions of Illustrator and Acrobat are still powerful and extremely useful for basic work.

When my former employer closed I was able to obtain old versions of PS, IL, InD, and Acrobat...pre-CS versions. All are still useful--although Acrobat 5 is creaky and cranky. CS2 will be a nice upgrade.

I don't understand why Adobe have never even gone as far as offering old versions of CS for cheap.

For my house, I'm not going to pay full wack for Photoshop. I'm just not. If I'm a pro, I'm not going to want to use CS2 over CS6. But as a home user I'd happily pay £25, maybe even £50 for an old version. And no, Elements is not it. And is still too bloody expensive in reality.

It would also help if Adobe grew up a bit and let me have PC and Mac versions under the same licence. It's not 1997 any more. People dual-boot. I realise that lots of companies have this issue, but it's still as dumb as a bag of hammers.

If you want to shoot RAW with a recent camera, you need the recent versions of PS and ACR - unless Adobe's DNG converter can convert your RAW file into a DNG (Digital Negative) that older versions of Photoshop can import.

Or you use one of the many excellent free / low cost RAW converters available and transfer the TIFF files into Photoshop. Or use Lightroom which is priced more reasonably for individual use and uses the same ACR engine.

Could somebody explain to me how they plan on invalidating the license? So far, they've been handling out software, under the terms described on their page as well as the ones included with the software. The terms included in particular state that you receive one license for every installer that you obtained from Adobe or a licensed reseller, unless there's another agreement. I've obtained and am planing to use the software according to those terms as Adobe has neither shown any behavior indicating a honest mistake (like adding a statement to the download page), nor released any statement to that effect. And if it's not an honest mistake, then the terms that I agreed to count and they allow me to use it.

The only reasonable interpretation I can see for yanking the nominal registration requirement after the snafu and not putting a disclaimer on the page saying you need to have bought CS2 to use the download links is that Adobe's concluded after the fact that having a semi-official free version is a good thing but isn't willing to admin to having snafued it. The ambiguity means that most people downloading will be consumers who would never have paid anything approaching retail price anyway (~$300/1200 student/standard) not business customers allowing them to mostly protect their bottom line.

agreed. Business customers are going to need the latest version to compete with others. Me and the like especially those learning graphic design are going to use CS2 for free. It's a good thing.

Almost (sadly) every company I've ever worked for that used Adobe SW bought it legally. But no private person I've ever met bought them. They all "got it from somewhere".

The exception would be for people who could but it at academic prices from a college store. ~$250 for one of the CS6 "Standard" edition suites is decent price (Premium editions are ~$400, and Master Collection ~$700).

I never understood why Adobe didn't make their whole range of Pro Applications free for personal use.

Almost (sadly) every company I've ever worked for that used Adobe SW bought it legally. But no private person I've ever met bought them. They all "got it from somewhere".

Nobody buys a 500$ copy of Photoshop to remove red eyes. And I can't imagine Adobe's sales from bundled PS Elements to be that staggering....

They license it the way they do because Photoshop and the other programs in Creative Suite were never intended for casual home use. They're professional-grade tools, targeted at professionals and the businesses they work for. That's why the companies you've worked for *bought* the software: it's a tax write-off for them.

The consumer version of Photoshop *is* PS Elements. If all you're doing is red-eye and basic consumer-style touchups, it has all the tools you need.

If you want to get all the pro tools in actual Photoshop, you pays your money just like the pros. Or you pirate. And with Adobe switching over to Creative Cloud, the latter is going to get much, much harder.

They license it the way they do because Photoshop and the other programs in Creative Suite were never intended for casual home use. They're professional-grade tools, targeted at professionals and the businesses they work for.

We're well past the days when the tools Photoshop provides are just for professionals. Everyone needs to do a little image manipulation/creation now and then, and the "consumer" apps are woefully inadequate.

So Adobe put up download links with OEM serials just to help people who paid for and are still using professional software that's a full four versions and seven years out of date? I'm sorry. I don't buy it. There are maybe a handful of legit users still using that software (like that diehard PowerPC fan that's not ready to face up to reality yet) but nearly everyone who really uses anything in this suite has definitely moved on to a newer version by now. This seems like a flip-flop from within Adobe itself, i.e. they decided to give it away quietly then it blew up and they got scared and backtracked on it.

EDIT: The download page is gone again, BTW. So apparently Adobe has decided it doesn't really care about it's customers using old software after all. Way to turn a PR win into a PR fail, Adobe!

Xavin wrote:

We're well past the days when the tools Photoshop provides are just for professionals. Everyone needs to do a little image manipulation/creation now and then, and the "consumer" apps are woefully inadequate.

That's what Photoshop Elements is for. All the power of Photoshop without the steep learning curve (if believe the marketing-speak).

I think it's incredibly smart of Adobe. Despite their best efforts to lock it down, new versions of their software are pirated very quickly. And while Photoshop is the definitive photo editor, that cost of entry is extremely steep for a home user.

Giving away the full suite, even the outdated package, gives people the real thing, and allows them to develop their Photoshop skills, making them more likely to possibly plunk down the cash for a more modern version at some point in the future.

Agreed. I've been a long time Gimp user and never used Photoshop because I wouldn't pirate it, or pay the crazy price. I'm not a graphic designer by any means, but I've come to learn Gimp and can some (probably to a real graphic designer) basic stuff. Now, I can try out an older version of Photoshop and learn some skills that might be applicable to CS6 (I can't imagine the terminology and stuff to be TOOO far off from each version). Who knows, maybe I'll buy an updated copy in the future. Probably not, but still...

The only reasonable interpretation I can see for yanking the nominal registration requirement after the snafu and not putting a disclaimer on the page saying you need to have bought CS2 to use the download links is that Adobe's concluded after the fact that having a semi-official free version is a good thing but isn't willing to admin to having snafued it.

It is almost inevitable that some or all of the apps use libraries or other components licensed from third parties. There could be all sorts of contractual limitations that bar free distribution of an out-of-date version, including per-unit licensing fees.

Someone who has CS2 could just look at the About menu which generally lists the 3rd party licensors.